


unsung hero

by Anonymous



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: M/M, au but that should be obvious, fix it... sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 02:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: giles had always thought rebounds only applied to actual relationships. dimitri had always thought he would never be able to let his guard down.or, maybe lonely people don't have to be alone.





	unsung hero

I.  
Giles had always known himself to always be the absolute worst kind of idealist, oftentimes obfuscating reality and foregoing the facts in favor of what he'd want to think. Which ended up being why, among other things, he let things with the pie guy escalate so far. He did regret it, after the fact, but that doesn’t fix the problem, really. Just acknowledges it. 

II.  
Dimitri, conversely, denied anything beyond pragmatism within himself. He knew the moment he brought his own feelings into anything they would be inescapable, so of course he left them out. How else could he maintain his level of productivity? So he detached, as much as he could, both for his benefit and everyone else's. 

While Madison had shown him the scope of it, Galveston had taught him the full extent of American scorn. Intolerance seemed to be the norm, as well as lauded; he much preferred silent acceptance. His preferences were not taken into account often, if at all, though; despite his proclivities laying elsewhere, he was victim to his peers and students accusing him of being a queer, a dandy, a poof, which he wasn’t, but it still stung more than a bit.

But at the end of the day, keeping to himself had never really hurt him. 

III.  
He looks at Elisa and the Asset from the shadows. He tells himself it's strictly out of scientific inquiry. He observes, he wonders, he wishes. He smokes, in his living room, later, alone. Where else? How else? Ruminating over it makes him feel a little bit miserable, in all honesty. He doesn’t need that, or anything like it, but maybe things would be- or feel- less awful if he had something like they did, with someone, anyone. The risk outweighed any possible benefit, though. He looks at the ceiling, he exhales. He goes on with his life.

IV.  
Giles cannot deny that he appreciates the fact that someone would kill someone, just to save his skin, without even knowing him.

V.  
Dimitri cannot deny that he would at least like to know at least something about the person for the sake of whom he committed murder. But he’ll never see him again, probably.

VI.  
Elisa's bathroom lacks the refinement and level of functionality Occam's lab has. Dimitri shouldn't really complain, really, can't; but in the dim afternoon light of Elisa's bathroom it's all he can think about. He doesn't have the tools he has there, to observe, to measure, to quantify. Even the one thing he should really be grateful for feels like a monkey's paw type scenario. Unfettered contact with the Asset sounded like an absolute blessing on paper, but in application, feels like interviewing a tiger at the zoo in a stranger's living room. He knows the creature isn't under any emotional duress here and as such he is not at risk of losing any fingers, but it's a situation he definitely has not acclimated to yet. 

The worst part is being there while Elisa is asleep- he can't refer to her for the correct signs for things without waking her up. And he doesn't want to impose- despite his issues, he really appreciates her taking note of how emotionally invested he was in the creature and offering him the chance to come over and observe him. It was a chance he took once, and then took again, but by now he's been here whenever he gets the chance. He hasn't slept much, no. But it's all in the name of research, in passion, and in the preservation of a magnificent specimen. And he can't take the same caliber of notes, quantifiable data, surveys and such, anatomical detailings, but he can fudge a couple sketches and write down some observations of behaviors. Answers to questions, the validity of which he can't really prove because he's not sure how accurate his signing is. Not that it matters. This little bit is his, nobody can take this from him.

Giving his real name to Eliza and Zelda had been a huge risk in and of itself, but it felt strange for him to have forsaken the code issued to him but not all the way, and, as silly as it must have come off, he thought it would be nice for someone to refer to him by his actual name for once. He cannot put any more at stake, though, so when the man he saved converses with him, he does little more than listen and acknowledge, despite wanting to do otherwise.

VII.  
Giles, meanwhile, is making coffee in Elisa's kitchen and ruminating over how he isn't sure how comfortable he is with the man in his neighbor's- no, best friend's- apartment. He definitely saw him kill someone a scant few days before, and he doesn't speak more than he needs to. Quiet is good. Quiet is also suspicious. This Hoffstetler guy does not really seem to be a fan of self disclosure- although Giles is not totally sure he can blame him. He supposes it could just be one of those things fathers betroth their sons with, and those sons betroth their sons with. An inability to share feelings. But it's an inability Giles lacks, so he's been trying to initiate conversation with him. He doesn't see the harm in it, suspicions be damned. He's longing for some companionship after the scorn delivered to him by the previous object of his affections. Hoffstetler probably won't be around long enough to rebuff his advances, anyways, even if platonic.

Every time he's tried to start some sort of discussion, though, the scientist just brushes him off. Where are you from? "Here." What do you do? "Research." What are you writing? "Notes." If he isn't deliberately being frustrating, he is doing a fantastic job. 

Meanwhile, Giles is pretty sure he's delivered his life story and some more to this guy. So he's more than a little bitter and would appreciate some reciprocation, just maybe. Toleration isn't good enough anymore. If Giles is going to be civil towards him, he's, at the very least, going to demand some form of contact. 

He enters the bathroom. Hoffstetler is taking notes. Why would he expect him to do anything else? Hoffstetler is always taking notes.

“Could I look through your notes?" Giles asks without thinking, and then immediately tries to backtrack. “I don’t know too much about science. It’s all a bit daunting to me, to be honest. He regrets it nearly immediately. Hoffstetler stares at him, a bit sorely. Giles figured this was going to happen, but is pretty enthralled and confused when the leather-bound book gets handed up to him anyways. He thumbs through it, reading the loopy cursive, looking at the hatched sketches with a great bevy of annotations attached. There's keen and extreme detail in this, much more than he would expect from a scientist out for simple observations. Hoffstetler is staring him all the while, as if he’ll try to steal the book or something like that.

“These drawings are fantastic,” Giles murmurs, thinking out loud more than deliberately speaking

“Thank you,” Hoffstetler says. He’s flattered. The other man is, after all, an artist.

“I didn’t know you could draw.’

There’s a brief silence, but it’s unlike the silences between them before. It’s not born of standoffishness, or caution. Just preparation. 

"When I was a child, I would go outside and catalog all the plants in our backyard. Every single one. And I would draw them over and over again, until they were perfect,” Hoffstetler says, very quietly, very slowly. “I would do that with animals, too, bugs, fish, but plants were more.. commonplace. It got to a point where it was practically compulsive. In class, before lectures, I would do studies of my stationary. The clock on the wall. I don’t think I ever stopped doing it, but I can’t deny that it has been good practice."

"Oh,” Giles thinks about how this is probably the most Hoffstetler has spoken to him at once, probably more than he’s spoken to him collectively, ignoring polite “hellos” and “goodbyes"

"My name is Dimitri," he says, still and quieter, even than before. “Mosenkov. Not Dr. Hoffstetler, not Bob. Please don’t call me that anymore.”

Giles hesitates, holds his free hand out to him. “Pleased to meet you, Dimitri.”

Dimitri takes it, shakes it firmly, and Giles can feel the hand wrapped into his shaking a bit. “Same to you."

VIII.  
“Shirley... Temple?”

Dimitri says this slowly, hesitantly, as if it doesn’t sound real to him.

“Yes, how do you not know who she is?”

“She?” he asks. “I was under the impression a Shirley Temple was a drink. A child’s drink.”

“A child’s drink named after a child actress,” Giles says.

“Oh.”

“She had a whole tap dance routine. Eliza and I know the bulk of it, actually.”

“Huh."

Giles can’t deny that he finds the gaps in Dimitri’s cultural knowledge somewhat entertaining. Dimitri doesn’t- they put him at risk, he tells Giles over and over again, to which Giles responds that his egging him on is then helping him, in a way. Defending against deficiencies; informing him, if he would. Dimitri doesn’t laugh, ever, but he doesn’t look angry, nor does he tell him to stop, which Giles takes as his cue that it’s okay to keep it up. 

Dimitri’s been around more often, and has been more receptive. Even when the asset has been … preoccupied, Dimitri stays, converses. Giles hears of his childhood, his lost loves, the person he has had to learn to become, the homeland which he yearns to return to, hopefully soon. Interestingly enough, he's played the guitar for him, too- what he deduced must have been a Russian folk song, as he offered no real information about it. Giles regrets having overshared so quickly, because now he’s the one listening and nodding. 

One afternoon, before he heads off, Giles hands him a piece of paper, folded in half. 

“In case you ever need it,” he says.

He pockets it, heads home, unfolds it. It’s a phone number, heart written at the end. Dimitri appreciates the sentiment, wonders if he reciprocates it.

Giles sits at home, waiting for a call he’s not sure will ever come, worrying if he was being too forward.

Dimitri paces his apartment, afraid to make the wrong move. The phone rings, and he answers.

IX.  
"You don't have to leave," Giles pleads with him, voice crackling over the phone. He’s devastated. He finally had someone he could connect with, and now this was happening. The worst part was that it couldn’t be chalked up to anything more than fate being a bit cruel. 

"I do," Dimitri sighs. “There is no way I would be able not to."

They both stand at their respective phones, Giles in his home, Dimitri at a payphone in a crummy area, in silence. He doesn’t want to take any more risks. 

What's baffling to him is how desperate he was to return, before, but now can't think of a single reason to go back, other than proving a point. He’s expecting to return, yes, but it now bemoaning it a bit. “I’m not feeling so sure about it anymore. My family is dead. It’s dangerous. Nobody values.. education, knowledge, over there. And the worst part is," but he cuts himself off before he can continue.

"Is what?" Giles asks.

 _You aren't there_ , is what he really wants to say. _I don't have anyone. I won't have anyone._ And for a split second he thinks maybe he really does reciprocate whatever it is Giles has for him. 

"Nothing," is what he says. "There is no worst part. It's all bad."

X.  
He's packed, he's ready to go. Ever a man of utility, he heads for the door without a second thought. But he hears the phone go off; he remembers what he told the women, and figures he would rather be late than not keep to his word. 

XI.  
It's not the happiest ending for anyone, really. He heads over to Eliza’s apartment, reiterating to himself that it’s only a minor detour, but pulls over because a car he doesn’t recognize is tailing him. It’s Strickland, accusing him of espionage, asking where the Asset is. He insists that no, he isn’t a spy; he wonders how Strickland could even know, as the man corners him into an alleyway. He’s shot, he’s tasered, he tattles, he regrets it. 

Strickland drives off, but an ambulance takes his place soon. Within the hour, Bob Hoffstetler is in surgery, and Dimitri Mosenkov isn’t sure whether to be grateful for his own survival or upset that things did not go the way he had thought they would. When they eventually ask him for someone they could call for him, he gives Giles’ number. He never dialed it more than once, but he did memorize it. It takes a while for them to get through to him, considering everything, but they eventually do get an answer.

“Hello?” he says, sounding especially distraught.

After being informed of the purpose of the call, he’s relieved to at least not have lost another friend.

XII.  
By this point, Dimitri expected to be dead or back in Minsk. Neither of these are the case.

He's in the hospital, and in a few days he’s due to be discharged. He’s stable, just recuperating. Strickland never reported him, officially, so technically he’s in a bit of a grey area and isn’t sure whether he’s due to be federally investigated & thus unemployed, or if he’s off the hook and getting shot is the price he’s going to pay for that. Karma must come for him one way or another. 

But it really hasn’t been on his mind all too much. He’s on too many sedatives to worry about any of that. Getting shot thrice warrants a break, he guesses, even if it is involuntary.

Giles has come every day to see him, and Zelda’s come by a few times, even if just to sit in silence, provide company. Eliza’s gone, she explains, and so is the Asset. It saddens him, but he’s relieved that at least it’s no longer under Strickland’s thumb. Nor is he, nor is anyone anymore, Zelda also tells him. She says he missed a lot. He feels that could be an understatement.

“Mr. Hoffstetler?” A nurse says, walking in. “You have a visitor.” Giles is trailing behind her, as he has done for the past couple of days. He has another card, and that makes six, the five previous ones located in a nice stack on one of the shelves he’s been allotted.

“What are you going to do when you get out of here?” Giles asks after sitting down in the chair , because his departure from the hospital is coming up pretty soon, sooner than he’s allowed himself to think about. 

“I haven’t really thought that far ahead,” Dimitri says, because he hadn’t. He really has been thrown in the deep end here. All of the negative surprises he has faced up until now have been so far removed from the usual machinations of his life that he doesn’t have the slightest clue how to deal with this sudden wrench. “But I do know I cannot go back to my apartment. It would be suspicious"

Giles nods. “Well,” he starts, “I’m sure you know I’m still mourning my neighbor, but I happen to know of an apartment that’s available for rent. Above a theatre, quaint, but cozy.”

“Sounds horrendous,” Dimitri says, and it’s probably all of the medication he’s on, but it’s the first joke Giles has ever heard him make. It isn’t even really that funny, but he starts laughing, and Dimitri laughs a bit too, weakly, but still.

And that’s when Giles kisses him on the right cheek. It’s chaste, it’s a quick peck. But it still happens, and despite the circumstances, neither of them have ever been happier.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if i fucked anything up! it's not 'if' actually i know they're grossly out of character. forgive me i had to fudge some details and jot some memorable things down on a pack of orbit gum while seeing the movie a second time tonight. this is definitely not supposed to be a thing that exists but i'm out here living my worst life and dragging everyone else down while i'm at it. enjoy! tell me if you hated it! please!


End file.
